The human race needs IPv6

The human race needs IPv6

The IPv6 future is ‘now’

Lets stop kidding ourselves about IPv6- Our pool of 32-bit IPv4 addresses have already been depleted. ARIN already ran out of IPv4 addresses last year – meaning that there is no more room in the internet. Yeah NAT helps – but its just a bandaid … delaying the inevitable. Thats no way for us techies of the 21st century to live! Its time for IPv6. In fact, it has been for a long time.

Whats in 32 bits?

You say 4 billion addresses. I say its less than the 7 billion people on our planet. And welcome to the internet-of-things. If you add up everything on the planet that would need an IP by the end of the decade, 7 billion wont cut it either.

And guess what, we already learnt the flaws of IPv4. We designed IPv6 to overcome all of those. No broadcasts. Link-Local addresses. Mandatory IPSec. Heck, we even support SLAAC in IPv6. Forget the need to maintain stateful DHCP.

But.. wont it break things?

Not a chance! We can run most routers in dual-stack. We have already figured ways to tunnel IPv6 inside IPv4 packets to ease transition. In short, there is nothing to be afraid about, but fear itself. You can automate most of this transition ( Again, thats why Network Engineers also need to be good hackers and coders, but I digress…)

Costs – another factor. But as someone who spent the last 10 years automating an Enterprise Network, I’m willing to bet that in a growing Network, you’d pay the same (if not more) even if you put off transition for a later time. Sure, there is going to be better technologies, but your infrastructure is also going to be much larger. And with large infrastructure comes a larger change-management process.

In short there is really no reason to stay with IPv4 and putting off migration for future. The future is now!